Samsung's Galaxy Note is outperforming expectations. The company announced it …

Samsung announced today the Galaxy Note, their 5.3-inch smartphone released in October, has surpassed the 5-million-units mark in its first five months. The rapidly selling device has led Samsung Electronics to gain about two-thirds of the South Korean mobile phone market share, making the company Korea's leading mobile phone provider.

When the Note was first announced, the device struck Ars as odd enough to be labeled "strange." But clearly the demand exists for the Note and its 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 16 or 32GB of internal storage, rear 8-megapixel camera, and front 2-megapixel camera (compatible with either HSPA+ or LTE). Samsung's official blog touts the device's the device's S Pen, the company's "revolutionary" stylus tool that "accurately recreates the analogue experience of using a real pen."

In addition to sharing its sales figures, Samsung announced an upgrade for the Note. Called the "Premium Suite" upgrade, the company states the new software includes extra multimedia features, a range of new S Pen optimized applications, and an OS upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

107 Reader Comments

Also... seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

Also... seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

The international versions have a 1.4GHz Exynos SoC, while the LTE versions (AT&T and Canada) use a 1.5GHz Qualcomm chip (Exynos doesn't support LTE).

Not ashamed to admit I got one (LTE) when my GSII developed a fault. Nearly every friend or coworker who sees me using it has nothing but good things to say about it and at least three have it as their go-to when their contracts expire soon. It's an awkward beast, but the benefits - fantastic for watching videos or reading, good camera, and remote desktop - I've found outweigh the disadvantage of the size. That said, it still fits comfortably in my pocket.

Also... seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

I've seen quite a few here in Australia actually. I'm an Apple geek, but I've touched and held one and I see the appeal.

One of those things; if Apple didn't exist I'd probably think about it.

Also... seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

I believe there's a two fold issue - because of the way Samsung distributes, they do not have a good idea how many are sold, only how many they shipped. I suspect this greatly inflates their numbers as I saw a number of them on the shelves last week in Germany. (And oddly the guy ahead of me in line was buying 2 Ipad2s.)

The SmartPhone market is gigantic so it should be no surprise there's a niche for this type of product. Others have tried it but they didn't execute very well. I think in this case Samsung got it just about right. As someone who prefers smaller phones I think it's a good thing. It may be the market will end up turning into small vs. big and all these in-between devices will die off. The whole 4.3-4.6" category that floods the market right now is the worst possible size in my opinion. Both too small and too big at the same time.

Also... seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

The international versions have a 1.4GHz Exynos SoC, while the LTE versions (AT&T and Canada) use a 1.5GHz Qualcomm chip (Exynos doesn't support LTE).

Not ashamed to admit I got one (LTE) when my GSII developed a fault. Nearly every friend or coworker who sees me using it has nothing but good things to say about it and at least three have it as their go-to when their contracts expire soon. It's an awkward beast, but the benefits - fantastic for watching videos or reading, good camera, and remote desktop - I've found outweigh the disadvantage of the size. That said, it still fits comfortably in my pocket.

I guess I can kind of see the draw for people not looking to buy a tablet but who want a phone that has some of the capabilities of a tablet. I have my iPad 2, so getting a phone that mirrors the same capabilities (only less, for obvious reasons) would be a little silly. I'm not saying it's an awful phone, I just haven't really seen any out there (again, in the US).

Also, to be fair, although I'm sure it would fit in my work pants' pockets just fine, there is no way I would be able to fit it into the pockets of some of my jeans. I don't wear girl jeans or overly "skinny jeans" by any means, but I do have a few pairs where even getting my iPhone out of the pocket can be a struggle... and that's pretty damned small. Haha.

Shipped is usually how Samsung reports numbers, not sold. They really have no way to tell how many actually sold. Also, who's expectations did it exceed exactly?

Reminds me of the Asus Transformer. If you read tech blogs all the time like I do, you'd think millions of people own an Asus Transformer based on the sheer number of commenters writing they own and love it, but it turns out they only sold 2000 pre-order and only shipped 80,000 throughout the entire globe.

Sold to consumers? Yeah, right. Anyone actually going to call Samsung on their bullshit on this one?

Yep, surely retailers continue to buy stock for items they can't get off the shelves!

This is 5M units, one does not ship this many units to retailers if the market does not exist.

Companies lie all the time about sold/shipped, but they are usually much smaller in numbers. (including the Tab for anyone who wants to reference the 1M shipped/sold story from a year or two ago)

So even if these are shipments, there is clearly demand for this product. Now of course I have no idea why as these things are huge, but you can't really downplay these numbers as they are quite impressive for a device that was pegged to be a complete failure by most reviewers.

EDIT: It also would not surprise me if this was units sold.. I see these things all the time and there was quite the demand in other countries before it came to the US earlier this year.. and they have apparently been marketing these things (especially outside of NA) like no tomorrow..

For the past half dozen posts, Samsung has clarified it's sold, not shipped. Regardless of whatever they've said in the past, they're definitely saying it right now.

It's a unique product and it makes sense that it's doing well, a small tablet with stylus was apparently a missing piece on the market. I've seen a few people with these, they really love them.

I am kind of amused that Android 4.0 is now part of a "premium" update though

edit: I've also been hearing that it's popular in Asia, where it's easier to use the stylus to write characters than to have a keyboard, due to the huge number of them. Makes a lot of sense, in that scenario.

I'd be interested in using a Note as a replacement for my too-heavy, too-old, and too-monochrome Newton 2100. 15 years old and still plugs along. The Newton has a 6 inch screen so I don't see 5.3 inches as too big.

I need to actually use one to see how the calendar, contacts, and notes apps function with the stylus. I wouldn't use it as a phone but rather as an Internet-enabled PDA.

I was really looking into getting the Note but the design killed it for me. Too appley for me.The specs are awesome, except the screen (not rgb stripe), but I don't see a lot of complaints about it, so it should be usable.The pen really should make a comeback.

It's made it to the top 5 most sold smartphones in France. I'm using one, actually I got mine stolen last WE and ordered a replacement right away. I missed it very badly the 2 days I had to do without: the large, very contrasted screen makes it my preferred device to read ebooks, keep up with RSS updates. I was uncomfortable with its size as a phone for the first couple of days, as with my previous 4.3" HD, and then no longer noticed it. I'm 6ft, a bit bulky... the Note fits in my pants or shirt pocket, I can use it mostly one-handed...

I was really looking into getting the Note but the design killed it for me. Too appley for me.The specs are awesome, except the screen (not rgb stripe), but I don't see a lot of complaints about it, so it should be usable.The pen really should make a comeback.

The dot pitch is so fine than the pentile thing is undetectable.

I'm not sing the pen much. The included pen is too thin to be comfortable to hold, and it glides too much on a screen that is, to top it all, too small, to write comfortably. I tried it for a few days, found out voice recognition is better for me, and ended up using the regular android keyboard. I don't type much anyway, so the fancy replacement keyboards that I tried also rather hindered me.

The Exynos might be as much as 1.5 X as fast as the Qualcomm chip in the LTE version. The Qualcomm radio is TERRIBLE - amazingly bad at switching between LTE and HSPA, drops connections regularly. I'd thought AT&T just didn't work in DC. Nope, it was Qualcomm's shittacular radio software. And the AT&T branding really shits up the phone. Selling the AT&T Note to another Arsian who plans on converting it to T-Mobile.

Apart from having originally picked the wrong version, though, I fucking love this thing. I'm the sort of person who simply remembers written things better than typed, and thus my recall for stuff in meetings has gone up enormously.

From your link: "The 5M figure is global channel/retail sales of Galaxy Note, rather than shipments," a Samsung rep told PCMag.com in an email."

Which is it still? Global channel (not sold) or retail sales (sold)?

I actually read it as "Global channel -> retail sales" I.e. the number of units sold globally.Since Samsung seems to be stressing that these are in fact units sold not shipped I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt. The numbers may be off by a bit with some units counted as sold still sitting on the shelves, but I don't think that would skew the numbers by more than a few percent.

seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

I wouldn't dis the Koreans. They are a very geeky culture. BS fails in Korea. That is, the Koreans are those so called "tech-savy" people you read about.

Apple does poorly in Korea since the Koreans don't go for marketing. They look at specs and build quality. Of course a lack of an LTE iphone is an issue.

While I would never dis the Koreans, having spent many (wonderful) years living in South Korea I don't think what you're saying is necessarily true in any useful sense. While Koreans do love their tech, their tech habits often do not transfer to the rest of the world, making their purchasing trends less important on the global scene.

They are also just as susceptible to marketing and advertisements as any other human being. That's why Samsung, like Apple, spends billions on advertising every year. Koreans are a very proud and loyal people, and would be much more likely to purchase something from a local company (Samsung) than a foreign one (Apple). It's kind of like the US 50 or 60 years ago, when "Made in America" meant enough to shoppers to sometimes win out over "really, really cheap."

seriously... how the hell have they sold 5 million of these? And where? I've seen them in the store displays, but never seen a single person actually using one "in the wild" (in the US). Are they popular elsewhere?

I can definitely see the draw of this device. Damn good GPU on the HSPA+ variant, and the screen's just the right size for games/streaming video. Too bad it didn't pass the 'small pocket' test, or I'd have that instead of a Galaxy Nexus.Still wish Samsung would stop being afraid to use metal on these devices. Everything they put out feels like it'll explode if you drop it, while the HTC phones I've had could probably dent the ground on a bad day.

Shipped is usually how Samsung reports numbers, not sold. They really have no way to tell how many actually sold. Also, who's expectations did it exceed exactly?

Reminds me of the Asus Transformer. If you read tech blogs all the time like I do, you'd think millions of people own an Asus Transformer based on the sheer number of commenters writing they own and love it, but it turns out they only sold 2000 pre-order and only shipped 80,000 throughout the entire globe.

Seriously now, do you really think they've just sold a few hundred thousand, and they shipped 5 million? Even if that is shipped, even though they say it's sold, it would still be like 4.5 million sold, and another 500,000 in stock, that will sell over the next 2 weeks anyway.

When you're talking such large numbers, it's way past that point where a company failed to properly predict the initial demand. That only happens in the beginning. By now they know exactly how many to ship and what's the demand. So don't expect a huge stock of them even if they said 5 million shipped. The vast majority of those will be sold anyway.